By: Dr Andreja Valič Zver
“Your grandfather would be turning in his grave…” wrote to me a few weeks ago Prof. Dr Zvonka Zupanič Slavec, MD, head of the Institute for the History of Medicine at the Faculty of Medicine in Ljubljana and member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts. With the upcoming referendum on the notorious euthanasia law and the loud droning of most media mouthpieces in unison, her words resonate even more. My grandfather, a physician, soon after the Second World War paid with his life for his commitment to the medical profession and its ethics. He was killed by the UDBA, the names of the murderers are known. He was killed because he adhered to the Hippocratic Oath and helped all who needed medical assistance. The totalitarian pattern and murderous ideology could not tolerate that.
The culture of death, this time wrapped in “flowery” rhetoric about the so‑called right to choose, is returning through the front door. The March 8th activists voiced it in their campaign “the right to abortion for all.” In the European Parliament, in one of many committees, they gained the support of radical feminists encountered everywhere. Much could be said about their psychological profiles – or rather traumas. But why do the notorious protégées of Soros not fight for the right of all women to a doctor? Why not for the right of all women to a gynaecologist? You see, that is where the problem lies. Doctors save lives, while abortion – however you turn it – destroys lives and leaves consequences.
Dr Slavec, whose professional career makes her one of the central figures in the fight against the culture of death and for respect of the culture of life, wrote in her appeal to colleagues during the signature collection for the referendum that she “understands the medical profession as one of the most honourable,” and continued: “People entrust us with their health and life. The greatest thing they have. Therefore, our profession is one of the most noble, if we accept it with responsibility, professional excellence, and human restraint. And I am convinced that the vast majority of medical staff perform their work in this way.”
She does not recall in her career such political interference in the medical profession as with the so‑called law on voluntary ending of life. For her, as a historian of medicine, the story is all the more shocking, since her thoughts, as she says, constantly drift back to Nazism and the mass executions of “the sick, the elderly, the disabled,” and the so‑called non‑Aryan ethnicities such as Jews, Roma, and Slavs.
It is self‑evident to ask why medicine, when it was truly still in its infancy, through Hippocrates highlighted as a special point of the ethical code: “I will never give anyone – even if asked – a deadly drug, nor counsel such a thought.” She continues that these were “times when pain therapy was incomparably worse than today; times when people died in agony from diseases we now easily cure; times when one might think human civilisation was less developed, since they did not know hundreds of provisions on human rights. And we even have the impression that human life was then worth less than today.” The key question is therefore why medicine at the very beginning rejected and defined as utterly reprehensible the participation of a doctor in any execution of a human being. And why should it be different today?
The only effective way to reject the unacceptable role of doctors in assisted suicide is to reject at referendum the controversial law with its manipulative title. That will be our victory, says Dr Slavec, and the preservation of the dignity of the medical profession.
With great respect for the esteemed professor and medical ethics, but also my personal experience – preserving the memory of my grandfather, whom I never met because of the destructive culture of death – I invite you, dear readers, to express your resolute opposition on Sunday, November 23. A vote against assisted suicide is a vote for life!